We are “building Rome”, getting our game on piece by piece with a ton of support from the our friends at Advanced Clutch Systems, Champion Spark Plugs, KW Suspensions, Turbo by Garrett, Hankook Tire, Forgestar Performance Wheels, Spyder Lights, Road Race Engineering, Megan Racing, Powered by MAX, 5thdimension, Corner3Garage, AMDrift.com, Fueled Racing, MotoIQ, AEM, MP Tuning, City Tire Online, Nissan Race Shop, PAC Autobody & Paint, Sparco, Fiveo Motorsport, Baker Precision and many more, and we would like to thank everyone who has lent a hand so far in the process of getting the Rydquist Racing Berk Technology 350Z powered by Champion to what it is today. It’s easy to forget and raise the expectations prematurely since we’ve been used to winning for over a decade, but we’re not road racing now and 2013 is our development year in drifting, Formula Drift is the “Sprint Cup” of drifting = highest level in the world alongside D1 in Japan, and our focus is to build an ultra reliable car and to get data at all tracks, learn the ropes and get me a ton of sideways seat time at the right speeds.

In Texas, the Berk Technology team with the additional force from Road Race Engineering provided me with a car that handled the super high temperatures during the four hour long Thursday practice like it was nothing. It’s what I call “The Berk Factor”, proper prepared and tested. I was able to get a lot of seat time and I tried a few new things/variations as a driver and we always learn something new about what we can and cannot do with our setup. The Formula Drift course layout in Texas started with a 90-100 mph entry (depending on engine power and gearbox) which probably sounds crazy but that wasn’t the hard part of the course. It’s followed by a fast chicane and then the most challenging part which was a very long transition where speed needs to be carried at angle for much longer than most cars naturally want to.

After testing a few things and not liking more than a couple of changes, we stuck close to a setup we know works and I put in two pretty consistent scores, always with line being the priority. Unfortunately we focused on the “wrong” criteria and I broke my M.O. as a driver which has always been smoothness and speed, and I was trying to push harder on angle and snappy transitions where we didn’t quite have the wheel speed yet to do that. We’re roughly tapped out at 108 mph and for a good transition, we’d need 130mph, which means different gearing and up a gear, which in turn requires even more power than our V8 upgrade gave.

Wheel speed in drifting can carry a drift longer with greater speed and angle and this was definitely the biggest challenge in Formula Drift history with this Texas course layout. Adding angle mid drift counts as a correction although my 72.1 point score after first qualifying landed us a 25th spot. We were however looking for at least 82 at this event in the second run in order to stay firmly in the Top 32 but the second run was almost identical in score, again due to little angle corrections and a dirt drop.

To give some insight here, these two blurry screenshots are from the livestream of the second qualifying, and the first one shows where I lost 5 points, it’s close enough to the outside but there’s a small angle correction (-2.5p) as I added angle, and then another deduction (-2.5p) when I pushed to keep the angle wide although the car with this wheel speed naturally wants to straighten out.

It was then followed by a dirt drop as can be seen to the right, which means a wheel in the dirt just outside the kerbs (-5p). Normally, and as I did in my first qualifying run, it’s easy to stay within the track boundaries but adding in the extra angle when pushing the car for a higher score, moved the car just a foot over the edge. You could reflect and say that’s a little steep but it shows how easy it is to lose 10 points in a Formula Drift qualifying run. Big miss on a personal level to not just stay fast and smooth and sacrifice angle, and another learning point. With a field this close it’s the difference between moving onto Top32 or finishing 38th.

This weekend we took the time to have a one to one sit-down session with Formula Drift judges Andy Yen, Brian Eggert and Ryan Lanteigne as they always encourage drivers to come talk to them plus at this time I feel the car is soon going to be at a point where it more or less entirely is going to be up to me. Talking to the judges brings additional clarity at each track to the sensitivity of each separate criteria. This means more hard work on my side to get fully transitioned from road racing where it’s all about speed, to get in tune with the different judging criteria and to become more competitive going sideways in this field of drivers.